


Waiting

by stormonmyskin



Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: Ambiguity, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Hospitals, I'm Sorry, Lots of talk about death, M/M, SO MUCH ANGST GUYS, This Is Sad, This is not Happy, if that bothers you don't read, it's really depressing, very sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-17
Updated: 2017-10-17
Packaged: 2019-01-18 14:53:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12390363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stormonmyskin/pseuds/stormonmyskin
Summary: The fact that I am surrounded by people trapped in the same limbo as I am does nothing to settle my frayed nerves.The hospital waiting room is not a happy place.





	Waiting

**Author's Note:**

> This is based on the song What Sarah Said, by Death Cab for Cutie.
> 
> Basically I was in a stormingly bad mood and I had this song on repeat and this happened.
> 
> I wrote this deliberately ambiguously so the narrator wasn't obvious (though I did know who was who as I was writing it) but I thought it would be more interesting left open. Basically either Robbie or James has been injured in their line of work, and the other is waiting in the ICU waiting room to discover whether or not they will pull through.

I sit staring at my shoes, black rubber on the shiny, mottled floor of the ICU waiting room.

My nostrils itch with the pervasive smells of both human urine, and bleach.

The fact that I am surrounded by people trapped in the same limbo as I am does nothing to settle my frayed nerves.

The memory of you in that bed. The green line on the LCD screen beside you. The beeps that climbed into my ear and then wormed their way into my brain and took up residence there.

You were so far out of my reach. I remember yesterday morning, holding you in our bed, your body warm and alive, your eyes dancing in the dawn light, your cheeks pink, and your laugh rumbling low in your chest.

Now you are so far beyond where I can reach you, and each beep of that machine, each little line on that LCD screen takes you further and further away, further and further from my reach.

I look around the waiting room at my fellow sufferers in perjury. No one is looking at anyone, or anything; in fact, as I look, I see almost everyone else is looking at the floor, or their laps, or their feet.

A woman across the room from me is pacing anxiously. Everyone in her immediate vicinity looks ten times as nervous, if possible – she is making them all the more anxious.

The TV playing in the corner – a dire re-run of Escape to the Country or something of that ilk – goes ignored. There is no sound playing, anyway, just subtitles that are a minute or two behind what is actually being said.

I think about you in my arms in bed again, and it strikes me with the force of a hammer blow that the only thing keeping that image in my head is a very fallible memory.

Memory is a strange thing; almost faulty. Today the way you smiled at me, your eyes going all crinkly, is fresh and crystal clear.

Tomorrow it will start to fade, and every day thereafter, until it is a muddy approximation of the event.

Only by repeating it, by refreshing the memory, will it stay clear.

But now I might never be able to.

A door opens in the corner and a nurse comes in, her dark blue uniform an instant beacon as all over the room, heads lift, eyes are drawn to her.

She calls a name which I only hear enough to know is someone else’s, and someone stands and goes over. They talk quietly, too quietly to hear.

All over the room, heads drop, eyes falling back to the floor, the agony drawn out a little longer. There is no comfort to be had here.

Someone else is pacing now, too, closer to me, wringing their hands, unable to stay still.

I turn away, unable to look. The twist shifts me on my chair, and the clinical green, plasticised ‘cushion’ squeaks.

In another corner are two tall vending machines, one red, one blue. No one has gone to them while I’ve been here, and I’ve been here a while.

Beside me on a low table is an untidy stack of tattered, dog-eared glossy magazines, the most recent one roughly a year old.

I go to pick one up, my hand hovering as if to rifle through the stack, and then I think of all the fingers that have touched them over the years, of where those fingers have been.

I let my hand fall back to my lap.

We’ve got so many plans, you and me. Things we want to do, places we want to see. It seems to me now that plans are like a prayer to the god of time or something. You plan with the expectation of being around to do whatever it is you’re planning.

Many cultures believe in sacrificing things for their gods.

I wonder if you are the sacrifice.

A door opens. A man comes in, crying. He is not staying in here; he is on his way out. He has received his bad news, in this place where we come to say goodbye, and he is on his way to go and deal with it.

It is an uncomfortable reminder that this is the likely fate that awaits us all…

Love is watching someone die.

Someone said that. Don’t ask me who, or when. But someone said that.

It’s true. Love _is_ watching someone die; one of you will watch the other.

But I am not ready to watch you die.


End file.
